Did Corbyn’s speech confirm the main argument of his critics?
This Writer doesn’t agree with any of what follows. It was written by Ian Dunt for politics.co.uk – but does he have a point?
I was glued to the television while Corbyn was giving his speech, and each new policy revelation was a delight. Not only that, but Mrs Mike liked it too. Doesn’t that suggest Mr Corbyn was hitting exactly the right notes to win the approval of the vast majority of ordinary people?
Mr Dunt doesn’t think so. He writes:
Of all the speeches Jeremy Corbyn could have made, this was the most predictable and the most useless. There was no thematic content, no idea unifying what he was saying, no quality in delivery, no attempt to speak to the public outside the hall, no plan for the future and no sign he is prepared to work with the media to communicate his appeal more widely. It was the speech of someone who either doesn’t care or isn’t capable of speaking to anyone outside of his immediate supporters.
Source: Corbyn’s speech confirmed the main argument of his critics
What do you think?
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Mr Dunt is clearly a professional espouser of round spherical objects.
I don’t think Ian Dunt is much of a judge of character! Because Mr Corbyn made the statement about the “tawdry” stories about Ed Milliband, I think the media will be courting him rather than destroying him. I was rather dismayed that he didn’t touch on legal aid, but there wasn’t much time, or maybe I missed it. I was interested the whole way through. It was a pity Mr Corbyn wasn’t leader way before the election he would have won.
Biggest Load of Tosh I’ve heard in awhile..since the latest Tory Lies n Spin
I’ve supported and donated to Corbyn Funding..but wanted to wait until after conference before deciding if there was substance ..and he didn’t fail to deliver in my mind. For goodness sakes, the guy has been to hell and back during the campaign..I thought his speech so inspirational..I rejoined the Labour Party this afternoon…Politics.co.uk? Who are they then….?
Despite the right wing Labour critics propagandist views, the majority of people watching and listening to his words, unless of course they were bigoted and biased could not have failed to comprehend what was encompassed in that speech. The main reason Labour lost the May election was because not enough people trusted labour to run the economy, because Miliband could not outline a clear cut economic and fiscal policy with which to fund the many empty promises made. Corbyn, without reference to Labour’s failure addressed this emphatically and with credibility. He addressed the nation Labour and non Labour alike of his intention to be inclusive in a way that Labour has not done so for nearly 20 years. Again addressing the belief that many people held that Labour was out of touch with mainstream electorate thinking or just didn’t give a damn.. It was focussed on detailed presentation of what Labour previously had total disinterest in, listening to the views of it’s members. The right wingers must have hated it because the speech represented everything that previous Labour under Blair and Miliband failed and still fail to register, inclusion of those inconvenient voters. He stands for everything Labour did not in May. He set out to address the move away from despotic leadership in which you get side lined if you don’t fall in line, the PLP, the Leader and the parliamentary members will not be dictating policy, the members will – how refreshing and absolutely anathema to the Blairites. It told all watching how Labour would be led by what the people wanted on issues such as immigration, NATO and EU membership, alternative measures to austerity, housing, education, public services and emergency services including the armed forces and NHS, unemployment and opportunities for all in a fairer society governed not by elitist professional politicians but by concerted inclusive consultation. No party can vote for us in a referendum on EU membership, which is as it should be and the door is wide open for peoples choice on NATO and further nuclear weaponry after 2020 and if he has his way, so will the people. That was his resounding message throughout. How the elitist Tory Lite must hate him, how dare he take all their power and privilege away from them and hand it to the electorate. It was their party and for the moment at least, while Corbyn remains, now it is ours, the peoples. The Tories will try to shred it as will the Tory Lites, Blue Labour/Blairites. It comes to something when Andrew Neil is defending Corbyn against a bigoted and pompous Blairite trashing what many thought was a cogent message for the future.
No, I don’t think his critique is at all valid. Mr Corbyn has between 0%-.05% chance of getting the media onside: The Mockingbird media is 90+% owned by those that fear real leftist politics, and who the Tories actually are in office to serve and protect and enrich. Except for JC’s rather naive call to accept refugees (this crisis was manufactured for gods sake): Read the statements by Vaclav Klaus for example, I rather like all of Mr Corbyns assertions. I would like to hear his real views on the Geoengineering that is causing climate change, and the Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 horror show courtesy of the UN and the Banksters.
I particularly liked the fact that Tom Watson will be looking into ways of utilising social & alternative media, which was his way of saying that the puppet and fawning tabloid and broadsheet media are bought and paid for trash (which for the most part they are). There is of course a lot more which was covered but not mentioned in my comment, other will fill in the blanks.
Yes; I’ve written an article in which I mention my own pleasure at his plans for the social media.
They worried they very worried and getting worst sh** they can throw at jc who is this dunce doesn’t he listen to the peasants does he realise the papers are the voice of the tories yes the peasants want what jc is saying go to the back of the class dunce jeff3
I think Dunt is right, I listened to some of his campaign speeches especially the ones in Liverpool, Westbrom were of far more quality, delivery & continuity.
I thought maybe during his campaign he was free to express his views and plans without thinking about other Labour MPs, but now the issues of leadership, inner party disputes in opinion, etc may be playing in the back of his mind.
In a nut shell, maybe he is losing a bit of self belief with the lack of support from within the party. I personally wont blame him, when the party is filled with dimwits like Liz Kendell or Andy and ignorant torylites like yvette cooper.
But I’m sure things will start to change once they do more discussions and bring in experts into those economic discussions like John Mcdonnell says, Yvette can’t ignore what Stiglitz have to say about austerity, can she?
I don’t think he’s losing any self-belief. Maybe he’s starting his changes slowly, so the Parliamentary party doesn’t have too much of a culture shock to deal with, but that doesn’t mean he’s abandoning anything.
We’ll find out in good time, I expect.
Entirely agree with you. What’s interesting about Ian Dunt’s piece is not what he says, which is predictable, dull and wrong, but the replies by readers, which are pretty much spot on.
BBC interviews of people in the street mainly focussed on those who trotted out the old line “yes but how is he going to pay for it?” as if reciting a line. Corbyn needs to come out hard against the Tory lie that our economy is booming. He needs to demonstrate That the deficit has increased under the Tories, not decreased one jot, I believe the Tories won the election because people eventually believed the lie about “the mess Labour left us in” The reason that they haven’t cleared the deficit is still Labour’s fault say the Tory liars because it was bigger than we thought.
I thought it was a bloody good speech.
“How is he going to pay for it?” harks back to the ‘maxed-out credit card’ lie about national finances, doesn’t it? We all need to be putting out the message that national economies do not work like household budgets.
Small correction: The deficit *has* decreased under the Tories, by somewhere between one-third and one-half. The embarrassing detail they refuse to be drawn on is that they claimed in 2010 that their plans would wipe out the deficit entirely by the start of this year. (Not that that would have been in any way necessary.) At present, not only has the deficit stopped falling, it is actually rising again because of the knock-on effects of spending cuts they made in the months before the Election. Precisely as many of us were warning at the time would happen, but I don’t want to be an ‘I-told-you-so’ type.
It is the National *Debt* that has gone up, precisely because the deficit hasn’t been wiped out. The Debt and the deficit are not the same thing; the Debt is the total amount owed, the deficit is the annual amount the Debt increases by.
Neither one is anywhere near as serious an issue as the Tories like to paint them, but as they staked their reputation on supposedly paying them down, they have to be criticised for their complete failure to do so.
With so many Blairite snakes still threatening to stab him in the back, JC’s first task must be to consolidate his position as leader of the party. So if the speech was aimed at Labour supporters, as Ian Dunt thinks, I would say that is a sensible political strategy. The speech was certainly inspirational, with good indications as to how people can build on the energy that Corbyn’s candidacy has unleashed.
Personally, I think the speech has a much wider appeal, or would do if it was fairly reported, and that Ian Dunt is over-analysing it. Given the hostility of the media in general, Corbyn and his team have made a great start.
Ian Dunt obviously didn’t hear the speech
I thought the speech was predictable and fairly harmless. It was interesting to see that he used word for word a speech that was written by a blogger in the 1980s and offered to but turned down by Ed Miliband.
I notice the same confusion as during the Miliband campaign with the activists when they mix up activists and users of social media with the electorate. The people who voted for Corbyn as leader make up just 0.48% of the electorate. People who use social media are by and large people who have already made their mind up regarding voting. The biggest group that is not on social media for politics is the older generation. They rarely change their voting patterns. Miliband’s campaign spent far too much resources trying to get some benefit from social media. They seemed to think that success in that arena would translate into overall success but that did not happen. It is very easy to imagine that social media buzz has any bearing to the world outside that bubble.
Did he, indeed? Word for word, a speech from the 1980s? I doubt that. Let’s see the evidence, though. Where can we find this speech?
Social media is taking over from mainstream media – mostly, I think, because the newspapers and TV stations are run by right-wingers who have nothing to say to the general population. Older people are increasingly taking to the social media.
It has been noted that far more people voted Labour MPs into Parliament than voted Corbyn into the Labour leadership, but this is not comparing like-for-like. Members of the general public voted Labour because they preferred to have a Labour MP than a Tory, Lib Dem, UKIP, Green or whatever, but we know that most of the people involved in a general election are not very deeply engaged in the process; those who pushed Corbyn to victory were. Labour MPs who say they have a greater mandate from the public ignore the fact that the public could have been voting for them because they were the candidate offered to the public under a Labour banner, whether their personal policies conformed to traditional thinking about the Labour Party or not. Now that the party leadership has come back to traditional Labour values, those of the Parliamentary party members are being tested.
I’ve just found what I think you’re on about. Did you read about it in The Spectator? 350 words in a 5,000-word speech that happen to sum up the philosophy that Corbyn was trying to put across.
Not what you suggested at all.
A few criticisms have mentioned a lack of specifics. If they only could be bothered to register John McDonnell’s speech the day before they wouldn’t need to have wasted their time on that particular critique. A straw poll by ITV has Corbyn’s speech rated as 84% “brilliant” – I feel sure that reflects a genuine overall approval from those who watched it.
Hate to put a spanner in the works, but I am 60 years old and most of my neighbours who voted Labour in the May election only did so to keep the Tories out. Only 3 out of the 23 who told me they voted Labour had any liking or faith in the party. Of the other 10 people who voted for another party, 6 of them had been Labour for most of their lives but thought Tories would look after them and their pensions better than Labour. Two voted UKIP because they don’t like foreigners and 1 voted Green, the other Lib Dems. Nine people were not willing to say who they voted for. Since JC became Leader of the LP, 23 have said they will vote Labour in 2020, a further 7 will only vote Labour if JC is still running it (4 of whom voted Tory and 1 Green, 1 Lib Dem) and 1 can only say they won’t vote Tory. Out of the original 32 those who voted Tory and said so have now reversed their vote and four who would not tell me who they voted for now say they will vote for JC’s LP. Because I don’t know how nine of them voted I cannot accurately state how many JC has influenced towards the LP, but I now know that if JC keeps the party on the left line 30 people will vote Labour in 2020. (I suspect the reason 9 did not want to tell me who they voted for, had voted Tory and now consider themselves pariahs for having done so). they all know I support Green but voted tactically to get the Tories out. Now I will vote with JC giving us the best chance of implementing Green Policy, which can only be achieved if we have the power to do so. I do not read the daily papers and rely on world news from sources posted on social media. I was, for many years a Tory but became disconcerted at the way Tories were headed, away from people at the bottom of the ladder and towards the wealthiest and powerful. So for all you who think that the elderly cannot change their voting preferences and the older generation do not use social media, I would like to say to you all, Don’t pigeon hole people as if you know them, you don’t.
You haven’t put a spanner in any works at all (at least, none that matter). Thanks very much for that illuminating information.
I can only conclude he was watching a different speech.
So Mike, you Mrs Mike liked comrade Corbyn’s speech. Not sure what school of mathematics show you how to turn 2 into ‘the vast majority of ordinary people?’
All the ordinary people in the house at the time thought the speech was terrific. To me, that indicated that this Corbyn chap might be on to something.
You’ll notice the article directly requests other people opinions. Have you read them? The vast majority agree with Mrs Mike and me, and one quotes a poll showing 84 per cent approval of the speech.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that my instinct was right, in this case.